Beckman Coulter launches the RAPTRs

The two models are non-contact dispensers for low-volume dispensing operations and are completely robotic, the RAPTR standing for Rapid Transfer Robot.

Beckman Coulter's national sales manager, Stephen Paull, says while the PicoRAPTR is mainly for pharmaceutical applications, the BioRAPTR will be perfect for Australian biomedical research applications.

It features low-volume piezo technologies developed by Aurora Discovery which allows for precise and accurate liquid handling at very low volumes. Beckman Coulter purchased the instrument assets of Aurora Discovery in 2006.

"The RAPTR's are piezo-based so they dispense down to the nano-litre range," Paull says. "They are perfect for very low-level assay miniaturisation."

"You can dispense up to eight reagents and what actually moves is the microplate - the head doesn't. It delivers 500 picolitre drops at 100 per second so you can precisely control dispensing."

With various configurations, the BioRAPTR workstation is perfect for spotting, compound reformatting, dose response for cell-based assays and SNP assays in high-density microtitre plates, slides and chips.

The company says the automation friendly configuration combined with high speed wash, aspiration and dispense capabilities make the unit ideal for compound reformatting operations in assay development and chemogenomics applications.

Another application is high-throughput genomics. "If you can reduce your volume down to one microlitre of master mix instead of four or five then you can cut your costs dramatically," Paull says. "It will save people a lot of money and let them do a lot more research and generate data for a lot less cost."

The The BioRAPTR FRD workstation is an automated non-contact dispenser for low volume 384-well, 1536-well, and 3456-well plates. It produces highly accurate and precise dispensing across a volume range of 100 nL - 60 µL without cross-contamination, fully supporting integrated high-throughput screening, stand-alone assay development applications, and reagent additions applications in pharmacogenomic research.

Paull says the RAPTR models will be launched in the Asia-Pacific shortly and will be on show at ComBio in Sydney in September.

In addition to the new RAPTRs, Beckman Coulter manufactures the Biomek range of automated workstations - the FX, NX and 3000 models. The range puts every aspect of liquid handling - including pipetting, dilution, dispensing and integration - into a single, automated system.

For diagnostics applications, Beckman Coulter has installed the only total automation system in Australia at the Monash Medical Centre, which is the central lab for Southern Health. The company will also place two more systems in Queensland in the next year.

"This system is in one big line - you put a tube in the front of it and it centrifuges it, if they need to take an aliquot it does that automatically, it puts it through the chemistry analysers, the immuno-assay analysers, recaps it and puts it into refrigerated storage," Paull says.

"If you need to retest a sample it will automatically come out of the fridge, go the right analyser, be retested and go back into the fridge without being touched by human hands. That is total laboratory automation."

www.beckmancoulter.com